Germantown High School Students Touch Love Park, New Orleans

This summer, Love Park, Independence Mall and students are linked by an unexpected medium: stained glass.

Throughout August, student artwork is being displayed in Center City—currently at the Fairmont Park Welcome Center at Love Park and later on the mall.

Organized by  (and not officially affiliated with the high school), the program brings the art of stained glass making to students who may otherwise lack access to art education. Artist Joan Myerson Shrager helps coordinate the effort, and she spoke on what she calls her favorite subject—the kids and the art they create.

"It continues to blow my mind, and I'm a veteran artist. My artist friends ask the same thing: Did the kids really make them? Oh, yes," the digital artist said.

For the past five years, Shrager and Paula Mandel have molded local students into stained glass artists. Once a week, a varying yet ultimately consistent group of seven to 10 students convene at the Germantown Avenue church and learn from Mandel the art of translating pen-and-paper designs to the starkly translucent pieces. Shrager helps Mandel—the stained glass artist—teach the students to draw, cut, grind and solder their way to art. 

"You can't imagine the interest—these kids don't want to leave," she said.

One way this program is different, Shrager said, is the service element. For the first few years, students crafted stained glass windows to be used at a school in South Africa for AIDS orphans.

"They're not going home with a pretty window—they're sending the window to the world," she said.

Another important aspect is the cultural education all involved receive. With the South African art, students were challenged to think beyond making iconography familiar to them, and instead forged soccer balls, South African flags, and other culturally relevant images. Closer to home, Shrager said the program aids in tensions within the black community.

Serving mostly native African and African-American students, the Stained Glass Project has "brought these kids together and many have become close friends," she said.

After the South African project finished, a native Ghanaian young man suggested their next stop: Katrina-torn New Orleans. "His best friend is a black American kid, and he wanted to help a place in the U.S," she said.

Through a grant from First Trust Bank, seven or eight students will travel with their art to Morris Jeff Community School in New Orleans. In the meantime, the stained glass is being displayed daily at the Love Park Visitor Center through August 4. Then, the art moves to the Independence Mall Visitor Center (6th and Market Sts.) from August 5 to 31.

Artists whose work is being displayed downtown include:

• Oyinkansola Adekitan
• Deshawn Brewer
• Muhammed Brewer
• Janai Dallas
• NaNaYaw Effah
• Cornell Gilliland
• Marie Jeanne Hahn
• Tajir Revell
• Dwayne Smith

For more information, visit the group's Facebook page here.